


saffron, cardamom, turmeric

by leiascully



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: Community: pd_playtime, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-31
Updated: 2008-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:08:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlotte Charles had been living with the Piemaker for six months, three weeks, four days, and eleven hours when she knocked on the door of Olive Snook's apartment with the intention of spending a few hours away from Ned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	saffron, cardamom, turmeric

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: n/a  
> A/N: For the [**pd_playtime**](http://community.livejournal.com/pd_playtime/) March 2008 challenge.  
> Disclaimer: _Pushing Daisies_ and all related characters are the property of Bryan Fuller and ABC. No profit is made and no infringement is intended.

Charlotte Charles had been living with the Piemaker for six months, three weeks, four days, and eleven hours when she knocked on the door of Olive Snook's apartment with the intention of spending a few hours away from Ned. Something about spring made Ned crazy (well, crazier than usual), and Olive's cheer was a welcome reprieve. Besides, somewhere along the way, Olive had become something of a friend. Chuck had never had a friend before. The aunts, despite their love for her, had not understood the social needs of a growing girl. Chuck had consoled herself with her books and the subtle particularities of Japanese grammar, but having a friend was an intriguing new experience. Chuck was excited as she rapped three times on Olive's front door.

"Come in!" said Olive cheerily. Chuck opened the door. Olive's apartment was as warm and feminine as Ned's was not. There was a bunch of daffodils in a vase on the table. They matched the wallpaper. Olive was nowhere to be seen, which was something of a feat in the small apartment.

"Olive?" Chuck said tentatively, setting a box of cup-pies on the table. She sniffed the air: there was an intriguing aroma coming from the little kitchen. Spicy but sweet, layered and dense: Chuck was intrigued.

"In the kitchen!" Olive said. Chuck wondered if Olive ever spoke more than five words without an exclamation point, but her enthusiasm had its charms.

"What are you making?" she asked, walking into the kitchen.

"Oh, just throwing together some dinner," said Olive, tapping a wooden spoon on the side of a large pot. She leaned over a large array of small jars and pots, put one finger to her lips, and chose a yellow jar. She shook some of whatever it was into the pot and stirred it.

"It smells wonderful," Chuck said.

"Oh, you like it?" Olive asked. "Here, taste." She dipped the end of the spoon into the pot and blew on it before holding it out invitingly. Chuck leaned down and licked the end of the spoon. It was still too hot and she swallowed before her tongue began to burn, but whatever Olive was making was delicious.

"It's delicious!" she said. "What is it?"

Olive looked dismissively over her shoulder. "Well, you could call it korma, but there's a little twist in there."

"What's the twist?"

"Orange zest. You know, I never even look at a recipe anymore."

"I love it," said Chuck, licking her lips with a tongue that tingled. "You could cook professionally."

"You think so?" Olive leaned on the counter. "You know, I took this cooking class - well, to impress Ned, but obviously that didn't work - but I thought that maybe we could broaden the offerings at the Pie House a little, serve, I don't know, paneer and pie. Curry and cherry tarts."

Chuck rested on her elbows next to Olive. "He didn't go for it?"

"He didn't go for it. Said something about how it was the Pie Hole, not the Pie and Random Ethnic Dishes Hole, and then Emerson said that speaking of pie and holes, maybe I should shut mine and sidle off back behind the counter, they had business to discuss." Olive sighed. "So that was when I started experimenting. I hope you don't mind the part where I was trying to impress Ned."

"Not at all," Chuck soothed. "He really can be oblivious at times."

"That's certain," said Olive. "Men."

"You can live with 'em, but you can't touch 'em," Chuck said with mock bravado.

"How is your allergy?" said Olive, looking concerned.

"My...oh, to Ned!" Chuck lifted her shoulders, her mouth twisting up wryly. "Just as allergic as ever."

"That's so sad," Olive said breathily, leaning forward. Her breasts heaved in sympathy. Chuck found her eyes drawn to Olive's cleavage - she herself had, at times, used the endowment of her upper body to her advantage, and she could imagine the havoc that Olive's upper body might wreak, which was, at a casual estimate, considerable.

"It is sad," she agreed, turning her mind back to Ned. "You know, back when we were kids, he was my first kiss. I nearly died."

"My first kiss felt that way too," said Olive, and put her hand impulsively over Chuck's. "Isn't it good you can still touch someone, though? Imagine if you were like that boy in the bubble. You couldn't even get through the door."

"Have to put in bigger doors, I guess," said Chuck, tingling a little at Olive's touch, or maybe it was just that the kitchen was warm. It was nice to touch someone. The aunts had never been particularly physically affectionate, but when she was a girl, she had hugged them. Now Emerson was standoffish and Ned was off-limits, and it was good to feel someone else's skin against hers, even for a moment. Olive beamed and popped off the counter, bustling back over to her pot of korma. Chuck came around the counter and picked up a few of the little jars. One of them had a twist of paper inside and she held it up to the light, trying to see what was in it.

"I've never used a lot of spices. What are they like?"

"Well!" said Olive importantly, "they're all different, of course! That one's saffron. It's the most expensive spice in the world. It's made from crocuses."

Chuck put the jar down hastily and Olive giggled. "It's okay, silly, you're not going to disintegrate it. Go ahead, smell it."

Chuck, with some measure of trepidation, twisted off the lid and put her nose to the opening of the jar. The scent rose around her: sweet, foreign, almost musty in a pleasant way, like the feel of a new language in her mouth. "Mmmm," she said, and opened her eyes, smiling.

"Isn't that nice?" said Olive. "They're better when you heat them. Or put them in oil. Here." She reached for a little bottle of oil and tipped her finger over the top, then dabbed a drop of oil on the inside of Chuck's wrist. "There. Heat and oil." She dusted a brown power over the oil. "Wait for a minute and then taste that." She went back to stirring the pot and Chuck watched her wrist. Olive filled a pot with water and sloshed some rice into it along with some strange little seeds, humming a happy tune as she sashayed around the kitchen.

"Can I?" Chuck gestured with her wrist.

"Sure!" said Olive, and watched her as Chuck licked at her wrist. "That one's cardamom."

Chuck tried to hold the flavor in her mouth. It was a little woody, a little metallic, warm and fragrant. "Tastes like...chai."

"Very good," said Olive, dipping her head. "You know, I keep telling Ned we should do a nice chai, but he will insist on sticking to milk and coffee."

"Ned could loosen up a little," Chuck said. "What's that one?"

"Turmeric," said Olive over her shoulder. "It'll turn your fingers yellow."

Chuck tapped a bit over the damp place on her wrist anyway and waited a moment before licking it up. It was spicy in a way she couldn't really define, rounded and edgy all at once. She swirled her tongue over the bones of her wrist, trying to taste more. When she looked up from the savor of it, Olive was watching her, propped against the counter with her spoon resting on one hip.

"It takes a certain lack of stimulation to kiss your own wrist that way. You really are lonely, Charlotte Charles," Olive said, in a quiet voice full of compassion.

"Sometimes, I really am," Chuck agreed, aching suddenly. There was a yellow splotch on her skin and she tried rubbing her wrists together, but only succeeding in tinting the insides of both arms.

"You know, everybody needs to be touched sometimes." Olive turned off the burner under the korma and moved closer. "There's no shame in it. Ned would understand."

"Ned never needs anything." Chuck looked down at the floor, except that Olive was there, her collarbones just in view.

"He needs you," said Olive. "And you need more."

"I guess that's why I'm here," Chuck said. "Trying to fill a space."

"Oh, honey," said Olive. "Don't you know better than that?"

"Know better than what?" Chuck said, or tried to say, because the last few words were lost against Olive's lips. Olive's warm, spicy, orange-zesty lips. "Oh," said Chuck into Olive's mouth, and slid down the counter partway in surprise. Oh, but it was good, much better than kissing Ned through Saran Wrap, much better than her sepia-tinted memory of their kiss at the age of ten. The nuance of this kiss was astounding: not only the flavor, but the emotions that ran through Chuck as she thought about kissing Olive on this side of the wall and Ned on the other side of the wall. Olive was real. Olive was solid. Olive was touching her and it wasn't like dying at all, and Chuck kissed her back, hard, her hands sliding down Olive's firm back. Olive made a pleased little humming noise. Her body was pressed against Chuck's, and Chuck squirmed, trying to touch as much of Olive as she could, to make the most of it. Olive leaned into her, her thigh sliding between Chuck's, and Chuck gasped. She pushed her hips against Olive's, almost involuntarily. Olive pushed back. They fumbled at each other's clothing, distracted by the pleasures of kissing and friction. The air in the kitchen was thick and hot and smelled like a foreign marketplace on a summer day. Chuck struggled to breathe; she didn't want to break the kiss, and Olive seemed to feel the same way, so they took little gasps of air around the corners of each other's mouths. An aching sweetness spread through Chuck's body, as if she'd eaten too much sugar and her very bones were protesting, but it felt too good to stop; her hips kept pushing and pushing against Olive's thigh, both of their skirts rucked up around their waists. Olive gasped and her fingers clenched against Chuck's back, and then she went limp in Chuck's arms.

"Are you okay?" panted Chuck.

"If you only knew," said Olive, her eyes huge as she looked up, and then her hand slipped up under Chuck's skirt and her fingers twisted and Chuck did know. The sweetness was too much: she thought her teeth would fall out and her back arched, her lips parting.

"Oh," she said. "Oh. That isn't at all like the books."

Olive laughed, low and melodic. "I wouldn't imagine." She kissed the corner of Chuck's mouth and then sniffed the air. "Oh shoot, the rice is burning!" Chuck rested shakily against the counter, knees trembling, as Olive whirled around the kitchen, dumping the rice in a bowl and running water over the pot as it clattered into the sink. She felt peaceful, satiated. Touched. She felt touched. She smiled lazily at Olive.

"Thank you," she said, and then felt awkward about it. "I mean, thank you for, well, thank you."

"Now that is the saddest thing I have heard. Honey, you don't have to thank me," said Olive, touching Chuck's lips with one fingertip. "Don't you know it takes two?"

Chuck blushed. The phone rang, and Olive tripped over to it. Chuck marveled that she could walk; she herself felt as if her bones had gone soft.

"Hello?" Olive trilled. "Yes, Ned, she's here," she said, rolling her eyes. "Well, you'll just have to eat macaroni by yourself then, because Chuck's staying to dinner. We need some girl time." This was followed by a wink so outrageously suggestive that Chuck pushed herself up again with a fresh surge of interest. "All right," said Olive. "All right, all right." She hung up. "You will stay to dinner, won't you? We haven't even gotten to ginger and cinnamon yet."

"I never pass up the chance for a little education," said Chuck, and Olive beamed.


End file.
